December 25 is Christmas Day(圣诞节). Christmas is an important holiday in many countries. On Christmas Day, most families get together for a big dinner. They give presents to each other and visit friends. The Christmas tree is an important part of the Christmas holiday. Most families buy trees. The families decorate(装饰) the tree together. Parents usually tell their children that Father Christmas comes during the night and brings presents to good children. Of course, Father Christmas isn't real. The parents of the children are really "Father Christmas". They put the presents under the tree or into their children's stocking(长统袜) after the children go to sleep.

    There are many unusual hotels around the world. In Greenland, there is a hotel made out of ice, open between December and April every year. In Turkey, there is a cave hotel with a television, furniture, and a bathroom in each room. And in Bolivia, there is the Salt Palace Hotel.

    Thousands of years ago, the area around the Salt Palace Hotel was a large lake. But over time, all the water disappeared. Today, the area has only two small lakes and two salt deserts.

    The larger of the two deserts, the Uyuni salt desert, is 12, 000 square kilometres. During the day, the desert is bright white because of the salt. There are no roads across the Uyuni desert, so local people must show guests the way to the hotel.

    In the early 1990s, a man named Juan Quesada built the hotel. He cut big blocks of salt from the desert and used the blocks to build it. Everything in the hotel is made out of salt the walls, the roof（屋顶）, the tables, the chairs, the beds, and the hotel's bar.

    The sun heats（使变热） the walls and roof during the day. At night the desert is very cold, but the rooms stay warm. The hotel has twelve rooms and a double room costs $ 60 a night.

A sign on the hotel's wall tells guests, "Please don't lick（舔） the walls."

Just like football, basketball is one of the {#blank#}1{#/blank#}(popular) sports in the world.

The game of the basketball{#blank#}2{#/blank#}(go) a long way since its first game on December 21, 1891. At the beginning the game wasn'tplayed very{#blank#}3{#/blank#}(wide ),because students played {#blank#}4{#/blank#}game inside when the weather outside became too cold for  sports. Now basketball {#blank#}5{#/blank#}(play) in many different countries around the world. Fans of basketball love playing the games in all seasons—spring, summer, fall, winter.

Nowadays, we have kinds of technologies to protect us from different disasters（灾难）. We even know where and when some disasters, like the typhoon, come. While most of the new technologies are far away from us, some around us can help people in disasters.

The drone（无人机）is one of them. It can be used to send food, water and other important things when a natural disaster happens. Very often the buildings are too dangerous for rescue teams to get in. They can make the drone fly into the buildings to search for those who are still alive first.

Social media is also a useful tool when it comes to natural disasters. With its help, people can know about the natural disasters before they hit. And some social media platforms allow people to mark themselves as safe after disasters so others can know their status.

 Social media is also a place for up-to-the-minute news, so people can learn what is going on in the disaster areas. Besides, many social media platforms allow people to donate money to help people in disaster areas. The money will help them get back to their normal life as soon as possible. For example, livestreaming（直播）helped raise a lot of money for Henan after the flood in 2021.

Although these technologies can help when there is a natural disaster, we still need to prepare necessary tools and learn important skills to protect ourselves.

①On Sept 7, 2023. famous Chinese archaeologist (考古学家) Fan Jinshi, 85, was awarded by UNESCO(联合国教科文组织) for her protection of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.

②Called the "daughter of Dunhuang", her story with the caves started in 1963. At that time, Fan finished her studies in Peking University and had the chance to work at the Mogao Caves.

③"Seeing Dunhuang for the first time was very exciting. But only when truly staying here did I realize that inside the caves is a world of divine (神圣的) beauty while outside is a land of blowing sand and yellow earth," Fan told Gansu Daily.

④Back in those days, it wasn't easy to work in Dunhuang. Fan and her coworkers had to live in mud houses and drink salty water. They stayed inside the caves to do research, copy murals (壁画), and do whatever they could to protect them.

⑤As time passed, Fan found a serious problem. The increasing number of tourists visiting

Dunhuang might harm (伤害) the caves. A solution needed to be found.

⑥In the late 1980s, Fan discovered computer technology by chance. She realized that this might preserve the Mogao Caves forever. After over 30 years, the Dunhuang Academy built a digital database (电子数据库) to protect cultural relics there, allowing Dunhuang's art to live forever and people to visit the Mogao Caves online.

⑦"In my whole life, I've only done one thing: protect the world cultural treasure of the Mogao Caves,"she told People's Daily. "My heart belongs to Dunhuang."